October 08, 2021

Laws of UX - Augmenting
Design Process

User experience is defined as the interaction of a user with a product through its usability, accessibility, and desirability. It focuses on having a comprehensive understanding of user needs, thought processes, and limitations. A good user experience is a result of a good design process.

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The design process is a design thinking approach that consists of five different basic phases: learning about the audience (remember that you are not the user!), identifying the problem, finding the solution, generating ideas for designing, and prototyping the thought process. That said, it is also important to follow the laws of UX which can help to augment the design process. Sometimes, the design is futile if you didn’t follow the UX laws, as it results in design voids. The laws of design help to maximize the growth and aid to develop strategies for designers. It is extremely crucial to plan and scrutinize the problem before directly jumping to designing it.

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Here are ten laws which you should follow for efficient product:

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Fitts’s law elucidates how to ease interactions by careful sizing and positioning of objects. It means that the time it takes for a user to move to and engage with an interactive object should be less and the size should be large enough to select it accurately. To exemplify, in the checkout process in e-commerce sites, the CTA buttons should be designed in a way that they are easily selectable and reachable.

Hick’s law describes how the cognitive load increases on a user if the decision is to be made from multiple choices available in restricted timelines. This results in a lot of confusion and poor output. Hick’s law states that an increase in the number of choices will result in an increase in decision time. It is crucial to minimize choices and break complex tasks into smaller steps to reduce cognitive load on users. For instance, it is observed that the use of progressive bars for a signup process has resulted in more users signing up as it makes it easier for them to understand the process step by step.

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Miller’s law states an average person can only keep a maximum of seven items in their working memory. Its emphasis is on chunking to ease complex tasks by organizing the information in a way that it is memorized easily.

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Jacob’s law demonstrates how users more readily adapt to the existing designs than the new ones. It states that users spend most of their time on other sites, and they prefer your site to work in the same manner as other sites they already know. It is recommended to use existing mental models to minimize the discordance which can create superior user experiences as users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models. By doing so, users can easily understand the flow and can adapt to the new environment with a few new features.

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Postel’s law is also known as the robustness principle. It delineates that you should be conservative in designing a product, and liberal in accepting a variable input from users. Be empathetic or flexible about, and tolerant of any of the various actions taken by the users. It is important to translate that input to meet your requirements, defining boundaries for input, and providing clear feedback to the user.

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Tesler’s law states that there is an inherent complexity in every process which cannot be reduced. All processes have a core complexity that can be reduced only to an extent. It is advised not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.

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Aesthetic-Usability Effect states that the aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe that the design works better. It censors the minor usability issues and is usually ignored.

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Von Restorff Effect is also known as an isolation effect. It postulates that the most important information should be designed exclusively which can be achieved by distinguishing it visually as it is more likely to be remembered. The visual differentiation of these elements draws people’s attention and informs them of the available actions. A common example of this visual differentiation can be found in designing decision-making buttons like when you want to delete a file. By placing the visual emphasis on the destructive button (by making it in red color) will help guide a user to take action carefully.

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The Peak-end rule states that people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum of every moment of the experience. It means the product is usually judged on the basis of the people’s first interaction with the product and when they last use it. A common example is the checkout process on any e-commerce website like Amazon.

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Doherty Threshold states that productivity soars when a computer and its user interact at a pace of (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other. This can be achieved by using animations which helps to reduce the perception of waiting and increases the user’s attention.

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